Unknown program pops up on taskbar causing problems.

[Guest]

For several months an unknown program has been briefly appearing and then
disappearing on my task bar. The program only affects game play, causing
them to minimize to the taskbar. I am able to maximize some games and
continue playing while others freeze and need to be restarted. Non-game
programs seem to be unaffected (other than the popup annoyance). I am
running Windows XP/SP2 with Norton Antivirus and Windows Defender (my
firewall is also turned on). I have used these programs as well as others
available on the internet in an attempt to discover the problem but have been
unsuccessful. Other than automatic updates I have not made any changes or
installed anything new that may have caused this issue. Any suggestions.
Thanks.

 

[Will Denny]

Hi

Try searching for any spyware you may have on your system with the following
programs:

Spybot - http://www.safer-networking.org/
CWShredder - http://aumha.org/downloads/cwshredder.zip
Spy Sweeper - www.webroot.com
Ad-Aware - www.lavasoftusa.com

Try SpyWareBlaster to stop intrusions:

http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.html

Also see the following links:

http://aumha.org/a/parasite.htm
http://mvps.org/winhelp2002/unwanted.htm

Also run a virus-check on your system with the latest definitions for your
anti virus program.

--

Will Denny

MS-MVP
Please reply to the News Groups

 

[Elmo]

For several months an unknown program has been briefly appearing and then
disappearing on my task bar. The program only affects game play, causing
them to minimize to the taskbar. I am able to maximize some games and
continue playing while others freeze and need to be restarted. Non-game
programs seem to be unaffected (other than the popup annoyance). I am
running Windows XP/SP2 with Norton Antivirus and Windows Defender (my
firewall is also turned on). I have used these programs as well as others
available on the internet in an attempt to discover the problem but have been
unsuccessful. Other than automatic updates I have not made any changes or
installed anything new that may have caused this issue. Any suggestions.
Thanks.

I have an HP printer that was doing something similar.. it would open a
cmd window on the taskbar as it phoned home with usage reports for the
printer. It did this every few minutes, kicking off my Screen Saver, so
I removed it.

One of many ways to find out what program is doing this: Run msconfig
and disable some of the programs in the Startup tab area. Eventually
you can figure out what program is the nuisance. Or, press
Ctrl/Alt-Delete and disable a few of the programs (listed in msconfig
Startup) to see which one stops the nuisance.

 

[Rock]

For several months an unknown program has been briefly appearing and then
disappearing on my task bar. The program only affects game play, causing
them to minimize to the taskbar. I am able to maximize some games and
continue playing while others freeze and need to be restarted. Non-game
programs seem to be unaffected (other than the popup annoyance). I am
running Windows XP/SP2 with Norton Antivirus and Windows Defender (my
firewall is also turned on). I have used these programs as well as others
available on the internet in an attempt to discover the problem but have
been
unsuccessful. Other than automatic updates I have not made any changes or
installed anything new that may have caused this issue. Any suggestions.

Download Process Explorer from there. It is Task Manager on steroids. Run
it and and when the program runs, check Process Explorer to see what the
process is.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/utilities/ProcessExplorer.mspx